UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

I urge you to urgently conduct an enquiry as to the possibility that Israel is committing the Crime of Genocide. After conducting the enquiry, I urge you to please publish its findings and recommendations for preventing present, and/or gradual, and/or future genocide by Israel.

In light of earlier and alarming findings of independent experts, in particular since Israel’s hermetic siege and separation of the occupied Gaza Strip in 2007 and the consecutive waves of mass killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, this investigation, which should be the responsibility of UN personnel, is important and timely.

The former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the OPT, Prof. Richard Falk, separate Arab League- and UN-led investigations into Israel’s 2008/9 war on Gaza, and the 2014 Russell Tribunal on Palestine special session on Israeli violations of international law in Gaza and elsewhere in the OPT, have all confirmed that Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity have been perpetrated with impunity and, furthermore, that direct and public incitement to genocide by Israeli political, religious and parliamentary leaders have been well documented. Therefore, the UN Office of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide should investigate if Israeli officials are responsible for the crime of genocide, including the crime of incitement to genocide, and to assess and prevent the risk of a future Israeli genocide against (all or parts of) the Palestinian people.

Israel should be held accountable for its regime of colonialism, apartheid and occupation, including the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in this context against Palestinians since 1948, such as ethnic cleansing and mass killing of civilians. The urgent need to hold Israel accountable is strongly supported by factual evidence as well as international law. Like the crime of genocide, colonialism and the crime of apartheid are internationally prohibited. They also result in similar legal responsibilities: all states and international organizations, such as the United Nations, are to isolate and suppress Israeli apartheid and colonialism, bring responsible individuals to justice, and ensure full reparation for the Palestinian victims.

In addition, I am extremely disturbed by equivocal statements made by UN agencies in relation to the issue of possible genocide in 2014, in a situation which was almost as far from equivocal as it could possibly be. I urge you to investigate and consider that making equivocal statements is harmful and damaging, and I propose that an apology for such statements is in order immediately. In addition, a specific policy against making equivocal statements in such situations should definitely be instituted immediately. The following paragraph clarifies the problem of the equivocal statements:

On the 24th of July 2014, when Israel had already massacred 697 Palestinians in Gaza, of whom at least 170 are children, Adama Dieng and Jennifer Welsh of the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide published a statement*, which I find very troubling, especially when coming from the highest authority on the subject of the Crime of Genocide. While acknowledging the incomprehensible numbers of the dead, and the staggering destruction to civilian infrastructure to the besieged Gaza strip, which the UN itself has described as “uninhabitable” even before Israel’s latest onslaught, The Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide saw fit to equate the comparably meagre damage inflicted by the resistance of the victims of what very may well be genocide, to that of the perpetrators of this possible genocide, as they execute massacres alongside a campaign of mass destruction.

Therefore, please take all steps to rectify the damage caused by such equivocal statements, and please conduct an immediate enquiry and publish its findings and recommendations as to the possibility that Israel is committing the Crime of Genocide.

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I demand you fulfil your obligations and conduct an enquiry and publish its findings and recommendations as to the possibility that Israel is guilty of committing the Crime of Genocide in Gaza and other part of Palestine / occupied territories.

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, Israel has been committing crimes of genocide against the Palestinian people with malice aforethought beginning with the Nakba up to the present day. Not a day goes past where Israel doesn’t add to its existing crimes of genocide.

Through its UN vetoes and supply of arms to Israel for use against a captive, occupied population and for weapons testing purposes, the US is complicit with Israel’s crimes of genocide. Please act now, and shore up confidence in the UN and international law, which should protect the powerless against the powerful – conduct an inquiry, investigate Israel’s crimes and bring its, and its accomplice’s criminals to justice.

I was disturbed to read Tali Shapiro’s capable and thorough analysis of the failures of your office to discharge its responsibilities in relation to the prevention of genocide and related violations of international law and applicable human rights conventions, particularly in relation to recent events in Gaza. Ms Shapiro’s analysis is available here:

Ms Shapiro demonstrates carefully and at length the profound inadequacy – if not, indeed, complicity – of the statement from your office of 24 July 2014, which goes to exceptional lengths to maintain a familiar, unconvincing and immoral “balance” among parties involved in or affected by the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation and blockade, and the ongoing oppression and persecution of, and discrimination against, Palestinians.

Please add my name to the growing list of people demanding a consistent and morally defensible stance from your office, and an official, urgent, public inquiry into the possibility that Israel is guilty of committing crimes of genocide against the Palestinian people. You owe this to us and to the troubled world that finds no peace while there is no peace in Palestine. It is the key.

To: The UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide

Following Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in summer 2014, and following the findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP), I strongly demand that you conduct an urgent enquiry into the possibility that Israel is committing the crime of genocide.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com) is an International People’s Tribunal created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East, in the spirit of the International War Crimes Tribunal initiated by Lord Bertrand Russell and constituted in 1966 to investigate crimes committed in Vietnam and judge them according to international law.

“28. The evidence received by the Tribunal demonstrates that the state of Israel is failing to respect its obligations to prevent and to punish the crime of direct and public incitement to genocide.”

According to the 1948 Genocide Convention, individuals who attempt or who incite to genocide ‘shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals’. The evidence submitted to the RToP points overwhelmingly in this direction and it is imperative that the UN to hold its own enquiry and, if coming to the same findings, to hold the state of Israel to account. Failure to do so is a betrayal of the principles on which the UN was originally founded.

As a citizen of the world and as a Jew whose family suffered the Nazi Holocaust, I call on you to immediately initiate an inquiry as to the possibility that Israel is committing the Crime of Genocide, and publish your findings and recommendations.

To the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, for the attention of Mr. Adama Dieng, and Ms. Jennifer Welsh:

While your statement that ‘the ongoing Israeli operations in Gaza’ could ‘demonstrate disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli Defence Forces’ is to be welcomed, your drawing an equivalence between Palestinian resistance groups and the Israeli military is most problematic and indeed contradicts the right to resist as enshrined in international law.

It is imperative that the United Nations do all in its power to end the illegal, immoral Israeli blockade of Gaza which is strangling everyday life there. Even outside of the murderous attacks such as that which we have just witnessed, the siege causes extreme damage to the entire infrastructure of Gaza, it impacts health, education, nutrition, farming, fishing, employment, culture, trade, every aspect of life. How can the UN stand by while this continues? It is an affront to humanity.

This summer’s attack on Gaza, the third such military assault in a six years, caused barbaric loss of life, with over 2,100 Palestinians dead, around 500 of whom were children, thousands were maimed, hundreds of thousands made homeless, more than 87 families were completely obliterated, wiped from the civil register. The pain and trauma is immeasurable, the destruction catastrophic. Homes, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, farms, factories, the electricity plant were destroyed. It was a criminal and murderous few weeks, and there cannot be impunity for such war crimes.
Israel’s deliberate targeting of schools, hospitals, farms, the electricity plant and so much of the infrastructure required for basic living, make it an imperative that the UN conduct an enquiry as to whether Israel is committing the act of genocide against the Palestinian people.

While the focus of this letter has been on Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of so much of the West Bank, the constant killing of Palestinians, the apartheid regime they are subjected to, also demand that the spotlight be put on Israel for its crimes and that finally some concrete action is taken to protect the Palestinian people and uphold their inalienable rights.

I’m calling on the United Nations to investigate the possibility that Israel is committing the Crime of Genocide against the Palestinian people. Since 1967 Israel has occupied territories mandated by the UN as Palestinian, it has deprived Palestinians of access to basic needs such as medicine, food, shelter, and the means to earn a living, has incarcerated without charge hundreds of Palestinians including children, and has repeatedly conducted military attacks against Palestinian civilians, most notably in Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012 and early this summer. My understanding is that by international law, Israel as an occupying power has the obligation to protect the people in the territories it occupies, but Israel has, in fact, done the opposite. Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, have literally nowhere to escape the measures Israel has inflicted on them and there seems to be no action Palestinians can take to effect a change in Israel’s actions and policies towards them except to disappear altogether. Certainly this situation demands investigation by international authorities with findings made available to the global public and with sanctions and other actions deemed appropriate implemented as quickly as possible before conditions worsen.